Last week at a public hearing over the proposed Columbia River Crossing freeway expansion, Oregon League of Conservation Voters executive director Doug Moore sat down in the capitol building in Salem to testify against the bloated mega-project. After refusing to oppose the CRC during the 2013 legislative session, and after refusing to even sign on to a letter of opposition last fall for a renewed ‘Oregon-only’ push by state Democrats, OLCV was finally ready to come out swinging against the costly, ecologically disastrous boondoggle.

Moore thanked the hearing committee, mentioned how his group “holds legislative leaders accountable”, then spoke about how OLCV views CRC-supporting Dems as allies. He barely got out the words ‘opposed to this project‘ before concluding his testimony. In total, Doug Moore spoke for about 35 seconds.

As the state chapter of the national League of Conservation Voters, OLCV is among the most powerful and influential environmental groups in Oregon. Their endorsements and legislative scorecard rankings are coveted by politicians, and often set the overall tone for smaller enviro-groups. In a state that prides ecology, voters pay attention to what OLCV has to say. As an organization that brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual donations, OLCV is as well funded as they are politically well-connected.

Iowa’s Department of Transportation director Paul Trombino may have made national history this week when he announced his state needed to downsize it’s current network of roads, highways, and freeways.

Like the saying goes, government is always at least a generation behind society. Nowhere is this more true than Federal and State DOTs.

For Trombino to publicly admit the preternatural obsession with growth and expansion of highways in his state was in error, well, this is huge. But he went a step further, calling for an actual decline in excess roadways.

It took a bit longer than expected, but Portland’s lofty ‘2030 Bike Master Plan‘ goal of attaining 25% of traffic trips taken by bicycle has finally been reached. After years of stagnation at the 6% mark, a critical mass of galvanized citizens compelling complacent politicians has created a perfect storm. Portland finally has seen a steady annual increase in the number of its denizens confidently pedaling a bicycle to work, to school, and to shop.

Hi, folks. The defunct Columbia River Crossing freeway mega-expansion appears to be back. Mismanaging Perception will be live-blogging a committee hearing in Salem today, January 14th, 2014 beginning shortly before 1PM. For previous CRC related articles from MMP, click HERE. MMP’s CRC liveblog from last year can be reviewed HERE.

For those unfamiliar, or for those who believed this train-wreck had finally ended, it’s worth reviewing a few more of the facts. The CRC can not honestly be called a ‘bridge’. It is a 10-12 lane, 5 mile long freeway expansion and light rail extension over the Columbia River from Portland to Vancouver, WA. While doing nothing to reduce vehicle trips times or congestion, the CRC’s design and tolling appears entirely dependent on actually encouraging more trips to be taken by automobile, in total disregard for the climate crisis we now face.

Valentine Khubeyeva was killed this weekend on the streets of Portland by a GMC Yukon driven by Charles McBride. The lethal act of traffic violence took place on a section of Powell boulevard that doesn’t even have sidewalks. Sgt. Pete Simpson of the Portland Police Bureau stated Valentine was crossing near 133rd ave where there is also no crosswalk. Sgt. Simpson then layed the blame on her dark clothes, and not onCharles McBride, who Simpson praised for his cooperation with authorities. Police claimed McBride was driving the speed limit, but also cited fog as a factor in the collision. However, nowhere in his statement did Sgt. Simpson make any mention of Oregon’s basic speed law, which states “a person commits a violation when driving on a highway faster than is reasonable and prudent, having due regard for weather and visibility.”

As outrageously common as it is to blame clothing for the violence inflicted upon women, it’s also typical for authorities to blame the victim when a motorist kills a person walking or cycling. The very institutions tasked with protecting us instead protect the status quo, and those we elect to build the city we need instead throw away our tax dollars on corporate welfare.

Okay, I’m gonna try to keep this one short. After dancing on the grave of the CRC this summer, I’ve largely refrained from dragging myself through the nauseating task of tapping fingers to keyboard yet again over this $4 to $10 billion dollar mistake that just keeps on mistaking. Here we go.

To be clear, this is still a Dead Freeway. Oregon governor Kitzhaber declared such this summer, and despite his and other state Democrat’s best delusional efforts, the freeway mega-expansion has not been reanimated. The bonds approved in HB 2800 expired on September 30th, as mandated by several trigger requirements that were never met. There have, however, been some recent revelations worth noting. I’ll attempt to be brief.

Clackamas Country commissioners are demanding to see traffic diversion data generated by CRC contractor CDM Smith that, according to economist Joe Cortright, proves that new tolls on the CRC will divert so much traffic from the I-5 to the 205 that (A) the CRC will never pay for itself, and (B) so much more traffic will enter Clackamas and East Portland that citizens there will cough up a polluted lung while driving around searching for a space to park in their own hometown.

A colleague of mine recently asked me who came up with the line, “If aliens came to Earth, they’d probably think cars were the dominant life form.” I’d heard this line before, but had no clue who coined it. After about ten seconds of digging, I found this little gem of a remastered film from the National Film Board of Canada directed and animated by Les Drew and Kaj Pindal in 1966 entitled ‘What On Earth!‘

The film takes an albeit dated yet satirical look at car culture, including the destruction of urban structures to allocate more room for space-hogging cars. It even casts humans as parasites that get in the way of automobiles, preventing them from fulfilling their dreams of going absolutely everywhere, terrain be damned.

The Columbia River Crossing freeway mega-expansion has been slayed, there should be little doubt about this fact. Recent media hype over a potential re-animation of the nightmare project is just that: hype. It’s been speculated the moment that governor John Kitzhaber declared dead the $4-10 billion dollar freeway & light rail mega-project, Oregon AFL-CIO president Tom Chamberlain was calling up the gov, screaming expletive laden protest against such a quick surrender. Oregon might look like a progressive Democrat stronghold, but the reality is elected Dems in our state often slide into home with only 2-3% voter margins. Oregon Dems rarely have a shot at winning without a strong Labor ground game and DNC state PAC funding.

According to sources familiar with inter-legislative chatter, this last-second Hail Mary for the CRC is nothing more than posturing, simply an obligatory effort to please trade unions that lust after the biggest, costliest projects – not the kinds of cheaper, jobs-rich projects like the Common Sense Alternative to the CRC or the new CSA 2.0 plan currently being vetted.

For now, there is little worry a new CRC plan funded solely by Oregon tax payers could ever fly. According to sources, no Republicans in the Oregon legislature support such a plan should a special session be called in September. There is also internal information indicating elected Democrats fear a voter revolt should they choose to go back on their promises that funding triggers in HB2800 (Oregon’s CRC bonding bill), were in fact binding.

Pedalpalooza is over in Portland for the year. All the corking and fire and mayhem and drinking camaraderie was as enjoyable as ever. It’s always a bit disheartening when Pedalpalooza ends, largely because you don’t want the fun to stop. The other downside is returning to the drudgery of common life and the realizations that the globe is still warming, we’re still at war with, like, five different nations, wildfires are killing people, the list goes on. In reviewing recent local and national events, however, there are several cycling stories worth sharing that ought to mitigate your post-Pedalpalooza blues.

The first is that the Columbia River Crossing freeway mega-expansion is *drumroll*….FINALLY DEAD!! The $4.2 billion dollar lumbering zombie-in-a-coma nightmare came at long last to a sudden and deserving death on the second to last day of June, 2013 after the Washington state senate refused to waste any more money on the thing. My complete take on hearing this news was published on Mismanaging Perception.

It’s been thoroughly satisfying to read the sore-loser ramblings of CRC backers who just can’t seem to understand what went wrong. It should be perfectly obvious to anyone paying attention that everything went wrong with this project. Economist and bike commuter Joe Cortrightsummed it up well, “The CRC was the last gasp of the highway-building dinosaur. They had this world view that car traffic was going to increase every single year without limit.” It’s worth remembering that this utter mistake of a project was pushed full force by Oregon Democrats like state rep. Jules Bailey, whom the OLCV absurdly claim as one of their “environmental champions“.